Film and Concert Composer John Williams to Be Honored by Documentary Filmmaker Ken Burns and Old Sturbridge Village August 15, 2013

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Fallon Community Health Plan is event sponsor

(STURBRIDGE, MA) – July 23, 2013: - Award-winning composer John Williams will receive the annual "Ken Burns Lifetime Achievement Award" from documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and Old Sturbridge Village following a dinner in his honor at 6:00 p.m. Thursday, August 15 at the living history museum. The event is sponsored by Fallon Community Health Plan. Cost for the dinner is $150, seating is limited and reservations are required. For reservations and more information, contact rsvp@osv.org, 508-347-0210 or visit www.osv.org.

One of America's most accomplished composers, Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than 100 films. His 40-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones films, and Lincoln. Williams also composed the scores for all six Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films.

The “Ken Burns Lifetime Achievement Award” is presented jointly each year by Ken Burns and Old Sturbridge Village to an individual who has made a significant impact on the arts through projects related to history. Previous awards went to NBC News Special Correspondent and award-winning author Tom Brokaw; Academy Award-winning actor Sam Waterston, noted for his portrayals of Abraham Lincoln; Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin; and to Emmy Award-winning actress Laura Linney, known for her portrayal of Abigail Adams in the HBO series John Adams. Old Sturbridge Village presented the first lifetime achievement award to Ken Burns himself in 2008 in honor of his many award-winning documentary films. (View images and video of past honorees).

Williams has received scores of prestigious awards, including the National Medal of Arts, which is the highest award given to artists by the U.S. government; the Kennedy Center Honor; five Academy Awards; 21 Grammy Awards, four Golden Globes, and five Emmys. With 48 Oscar nominations, Williams is the Academy’s most nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. He has served as music director and laureate conductor for the Boston Pops Orchestra, and he maintains artistic relationships with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Ken Burns, who has been making films for more than 35 years, is perhaps the most critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker in the country. According to the late historian Stephen Ambrose, “more Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.”

Famous for his documentaries that include The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, and The War, Burns actually made his very first film about Old Sturbridge Village as a college student in 1975, during which he used the now-famous “Ken Burns effect” – a panning technique – for the first time.

The OSV film, produced as his senior project while a film major at Hampshire College, is a 28-minute film entitled Working in Rural New England. The project inspired Burns to pursue historical subjects, a direction he has continued throughout his career. “Sturbridge is where I became a filmmaker, and where I caught the history bug for good,” he noted.

"I’ve known since I was 12 that I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I have always had a passion and interest in history. When I was producing the film about Old Sturbridge Village -- this was the point at which the film bug and the history bug sort of fused, like a nuclear reaction. That was the first film that I signed my name to. That was the first film in which I felt I was the author.”

Recent films by Burns include the 2012 film, The Dust Bowl, a two-part series about the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history. He also co-produced The Central Park Five, which debuted in theaters in 2012 and chronicles the Central Park Jogger case from the perspective of five wrongly convicted teenagers. Other recent Burns films include Prohibition, which was broadcast in 2010; The Tenth Inning, an update to the 1994 epic, Baseball; and The National Parks: America's Best Idea, which aired on PBS in 2009. Future projects include films on the Roosevelts, Jackie Robinson, the Vietnam War, and country music.

Old Sturbridge Village, one of the oldest and largest living history museums in the country, celebrates New England life in the 1830s. The museum, famous for its costumed interpreters, has more than 40 historic buildings on 200 acres, three water-powered mills, two covered bridges, a working farm with heritage breed animals, and a stagecoach that visitors can ride. OSV is open year-round; admission: $24; seniors $20; children 3-17, $8; children 2 and under, free. For more: www.osv.org or call 1-800-SEE-1830.

Press Releases

Banner:

Sign up for our newsletter!

Email *

John Williams Biography

In a career that spans five decades, John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and for the concert stage. He has served as music director and laureate conductor of one of the country’s treasured musical institutions, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and he maintains thriving artistic relationships with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. Williams has received a variety of prestigious awards, including the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honor, the Olympic Order, and numerous Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. He remains one of our nation’s most distinguished and contributive musical voices.

Mr. Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than one hundred films. His 40-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones films, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Munich, Hook, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Empire of the Sun, The Adventures of TinTin and War Horse. Their latest collaboration, the critically acclaimed Lincoln, was released in November of 2012. Mr. Williams composed the scores for all six Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Memoirs of a Geisha, Far and Away, The Accidental Tourist, Home Alone, Nixon, The Patriot, Angela’s Ashes, Seven Years in Tibet, The Witches of Eastwick, Rosewood, Sleepers, Sabrina, Presumed Innocent, The Cowboys, The Reivers and Goodbye, Mr. Chips among many others. He has worked with many legendary directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler and Robert Altman. In 1971, he adapted the score for the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, for which he composed original violin cadenzas for renowned virtuoso Isaac Stern. He has appeared on recordings as pianist and conductor with Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jessye Norman, and others. Mr. Williams has received five Academy Awards and forty-eight Oscar nominations, making him the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. He also has received seven British Academy Awards (BAFTA), twenty-one Grammys, four Golden Globes, five Emmys, and numerous gold and platinum records.

Born and raised in New York, Mr. Williams moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1948, where he studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. After service in the Air Force, he returned to New York to attend the Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Madame Rosina Lhevinne. While in New York, he also worked as a jazz pianist, both in nightclubs and on recordings. He returned to Los Angeles and began his career in the film industry, working with a number of accomplished composers including Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Franz Waxman. He went on to write music for more than 200 television films for the groundbreaking, early anthology series Alcoa Theatre, Kraft Television Theatre, Chrysler Theatre and Playhouse 90. His more recent contributions to television music include the well-known theme for NBC Nightly News (“The Mission”), the theme for what has become network television’s longest-running series, NBC’s Meet the Press, and a new theme for the prestigious PBS arts showcase Great Performances.

In addition to his activity in film and television, Mr. Williams has composed numerous works for the concert stage, among them two symphonies, and concertos for flute, violin, clarinet, viola, oboe and tuba. His cello concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood in 1994. Mr. Williams also has filled commissions by several of the world’s leading orchestras, including a bassoon concerto for the New York Philharmonic entitled “The Five Sacred Trees,” a trumpet concerto for the Cleveland Orchestra, and a horn concerto for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “Seven for Luck”, a seven-piece song cycle for soprano and orchestra based on the texts of former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, was premiered by the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in 1998. At the opening concert of their 2009/2010 season, James Levine led the Boston Symphony in the premiere Mr. Williams’ “On Willows and Birches,” a new concerto for harp and orchestra.

In January 1980, Mr. Williams was named nineteenth music director of the Boston Pops Orchestra, succeeding the legendary Arthur Fiedler. He currently holds the title of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor which he assumed following his retirement in December, 1993, after fourteen highly successful seasons. He also holds the title of Artist-in-Residence at Tanglewood.

In the world of sport, he has contributed musical themes for the 1984, 1988, and 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and the 1987 International Summer Games of the Special Olympics. In 2006, Mr. Williams composed the theme for NBC’s presentation of NFL Football.

Mr. Williams holds honorary degrees from twenty-one American universities, including The Juilliard School, Boston College, Northeastern University, Tufts University, Boston University, the New England Conservatory of Music, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, The Eastman School of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the University of Southern California. He is a recipient of the 2009 National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States Government. In 2003, he received the Olympic Order, the IOC’s highest honor, for his contributions to the Olympic movement. He served as the Grand Marshal of the 2004 Rose Parade in Pasadena, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor in December of 2004. Mr. Williams was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009, and in January of that same year he composed and arranged “Air and Simple Gifts” especially for the first inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama.

Ken Burns Biography

Ken Burns has been making films for more than thirty-five years. Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made. A December 2002 poll conducted by Real Screen Magazine listed The Civil War as second only to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North as the “most influential documentary of all time,” and named Ken Burns and Robert Flaherty as the “most influential documentary makers” of all time. In March, 2009, David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said, “… Burns is not only the greatest documentarian of the day, but also the most influential filmmaker period. That includes feature filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I say that because Burns not only turned millions of persons onto history with his films, he showed us a new way of looking at our collective past and ourselves.” The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, "More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source." Ken’s films have won thirteen Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ken has been the recipient of more than twenty-five honorary degrees and has delivered many treasured commencement addresses. He is a sought-after public speaker, appearing at colleges, civic organizations and business groups throughout the country.

Projects currently in production include The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, a seven-episode series scheduled for broadcast in the fall of 2014, as well as films on Jackie Robinson, the Vietnam War and the history of country music.

In April 2013, PBS broadcast The Central Park Five, a two-hour film about the five black and Hispanic teenagers wrongly convicted of the 1989 Central Park Jogger rape. The film paints a revealing portrait of one of our nation’s most egregious miscarriages of justice. The Central Park Five played at the Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, London, Vienna and DOC NYC film festivals, among others. It opened in theaters nationwide in November 2012, and was named by MovieMaker magazine as one of the top 10 films of the year. Other honors include the New York Film Critics Circle 2012 Best Non-Fiction Film award, the 2913 Gabriel Award and the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award.

Support OSV

Old Sturbridge Village plays a vital role in preserving early American history and has been an iconic New England destination for nearly 70 years. Supporting the Village helps history come alive for more than 250,000 students, families, tourists, and scholars every year.